


Leave This World Alive

by Kawaiibooker



Series: What Could Have Been [2]
Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, I'm serious y'all this shit's sad PART TWO, M/M, P.S. I Love You AU, Post-Game(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 08:48:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16971492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kawaiibooker/pseuds/Kawaiibooker
Summary: Charles struggles after Arthur is gone.Arthur comes back for him (in a way).





	Leave This World Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetaed.
> 
> Written for a prompt by [your-a-good-man-arthur](https://your-a-good-man-arthur.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.
> 
> Please heed the tags. Spoilers for Chapter 6.
> 
> EDIT: Oh I just noticed, this is officially my 50th fic on AO3 c: dunno what that says about me, but still - here's to 50 more?

A year later, Charles Smith wakes and wishes he hadn't.

Lying on his back, he blinks up into the darkness of his tent. It's quiet outside, only the distant crackling of a fire and hushed conversations to be heard. There's bird song, too, cheerful and carefree as it announces the break of a new day.

It doesn't feel right. Then again, nothing has ever since–

Charles closes his eyes again, lids clenched shut as if he could physically will away what this means. A year. Three-hundred-sixty-five fucking days have passed and the world spins on, a world without Arthur Morgan in it.

A few tears escape, burning in the corner of his eyes and trailing down his temples. They're due to leave a permanent path in his skin anytime soon. Wouldn't that be fitting? There's nothing Charles has to remember Arthur by, except the broken edges of his heart and the new lines grief has carved into his face.

Somewhere out there, there's a grave with his name on its cross – yet Charles hasn't been back since he buried him, hands aching, full of splinters as he engraved a wish into the wood, virtually blind with loss and exhaustion. He couldn't bring himself to.

Today of all days, he doesn't – can't – run from the rush of emotion that takes ahold of him. Charles inhales and exhales, shakier every time, and _misses_ Arthur. The unique drawl of his voice, the gentle touch of too-rough hands; the way the right kind of smile could make his eyes light up, full of fragile hope and so blue.

There's nothing in the world that could compare, and Charles tried. He did. In those first weeks, when continuing to breathe felt too painful and the void inside made everything else meaningless, he went looking, was utterly convinced that if only he searched long enough, he'd find him eventually.

Somewhere in the margins, and even if just in the corner of a dog-eared book, Arthur must've left his mark.

It was all gone, though. Charles had stopped looking, and he still remembers viscerally how it hit him then. That Arthur – this kind, kind man, too kind for the things life had in store for him – left, not in the tumultuous roar they had envisioned for themselves over a shared bottle of whiskey under the stars but beaten and broken and  _alone_.

A candle alight inside a storm, its flame quietly flickering out before it reached the end of its wick.

“Arthur, I swear...”

Charles fights for breath as he lies there without the familiar weight of the man he loves beside him, one set of lungs where there should be two, and he doesn't know how to end that sentence.

_I swear I won't forget._

_I swear I will finish what you started._

But he knows, deep within, there's only one thing Arthur would've wanted.

_I swear I will keep going._

It's getting harder and harder to keep his promises.

*

Charles doesn't notice the courier's presence, at first.

He's tending to Taima as he does each morning, brushing the dust off her back and checking her legs for injuries. The past year, too, has taken a toll on her; mere days after– _after_ , she had started pawing the ground and digging her nose into Charles's pockets, and Charles had been too numb to understand at first that she was begging him for Arthur's treats, the ones he used to slip her when he thought Charles wasn't paying attention.

Some days, Charles wonders if horses grieve as well, or if he's just projecting his own state of mind onto her. Maybe it doesn't really matter.

When she turns her expectant gaze on him, Charles rolls his eyes and produces a carrot out of his back pocket. He breaks it apart and gives her the bigger half, keeping the other for himself.

“Ah, there– Mr. Smith!”

Charles stop chewing as his head snaps up, the mouthful sitting awkwardly on his tongue for a moment before he swallows. Nobody calls him that here. Eyes narrowed and shoulders tense, he reaches for his knife–

“Hey, uh”, the stranger says, eyes flitting nervously from Charles's hands to his face and back again. “Easy there, mister. Charles Smith, right? Just wanna deliver this letter I got for ya, and I'll be on my way. No trouble comin' from me, I promise!”

“Who?” Charles's voice sounds raspy even to his own ears. “Who sent you?”

Clearly, it doesn't inspire much confidence because the courier scrambles for an answer, quick enough to stumble over his words.

“A-Alden, sir. From the post office in Rhodes? Told me to look up in the mountains for ya. Never been this far up North, I believe– Ain't complainin', of course, no sir!”

 _Alden?_ A vague memory stirs. One of the discouraged men that have been popping up more and more, if you knew where to look for 'em. Charles holds out a hand, meeting the other's uncomprehending stare. “The letter?”, he prompts.

“Ah! Yes, sir, uh– Here.”

It has weight to it, the letter. Charles doesn't throw more than a cursory glance at it, not with the stranger-turned-courier trying to look as well, but there's something about it that makes his heart beat faster, awakened from its year-long slumber.

Only at Charles's raised eyebrow does the courier straighten up, “Right”, he says, nodding to himself. “I'll get goin'.”

For a moment, Charles watches him leave, weaseling his way past a busy camp filled with even busier people, almost comical with how out-of-place his uniform looks here. Seems like a lifetime ago that he's dealt with any outsiders. He can't say he missed it.

Charles shakes his head and looks down at the letter in his hands – Taima's on it before he can do more than flip it, ears pointed and nose flaring as she sniffs it curiously, and, with the practiced ease of having grown up with and around animals, Charles raises it out of her reach.

“That's for me, girl. You had your treat already.”

There's much to be done still; Charles needs to check the traps, maybe bring home a doe if luck is on his side. Last time he did so, Rains Fall told him he's earned his keep with or without hunting for them, but Charles feels better knowing he can help, somehow.

 _Later_ , he decides, pocketing the letter. He'll read it later.

*

It's past midnight when Charles returns, dried blood gone tacky on his hands and his feet half-frozen in his boots. Only after he's in his tent, washed and fed and as close to the much-needed fire as he dares, does he remember the letter.

It's in the back pocket of his discarded pants, and looking a little crumpled around the edges. Charles has to tilt it towards the firelight to read the single line on the front of the envelope, and he nearly drops it entirely when he does.

 _Charles Smith_ in the delicate, narrow twists and turns of a handwriting he'd recognize anywhere, even five, ten, thirty years down the line.

And there's _hope_ , for one blinding moment as he slides his fingers into folded paper and pulls out a few pages worth, hope that somehow, in some way, Arthur did manage to return to him. That this is the sign he's been looking out for, that there is a place to go and a date to keep in mind that will make the past year undone.

That somewhere there, at the end of the line, is Arthur with his drawl and his beautiful eyes, waiting for him.

That is not how these things are meant to go, of course. There in the corner, on the very first page, is a date and a place and Charles's chest aches with the loss of it all, the numbers blurring in front of his eyes.

Beaver Hollow, just a few days before–

“Oh, Arthur”, Charles breathes, less than a whisper as he realizes that this, reading Arthur's first and final letter to him, might very well be the last thing he does. That perhaps his tattered heart struggled on beating just for him to witness this, just as he was there to witness Arthur's dead body.

And yet, the feel of the paper between his fingers is familiar, comforting, reminiscent of that journal Arthur carried everywhere and there, down one side of it, it is a little torn where it was carefully ripped out. Charles wipes a stray tear off his cheek before it can drip down and ruin any of it. Even so he finds it impossibly hard to start, to take in anything beyond the _Dear Charles_ at the very beginning.

Arthur's words, the rarest resource Charles has.

It's inevitable, that he does – start, that is, because he must. There is no world in which Charles wouldn't listen to what Arthur has to say, no matter how frail and weak his voice got, hacked into pieces by his coughing that will haunt Charles to the end of his days, too.

Thus, he reads, _Dear Charles_ , and rubs at his chest where his heart breaks anew.

_I've started this more times than I can count and to be honest with you, I still have no idea what I'm doing._

_The thing is: I don't have much time. Well, you know this, obviously you do... I'm giving this letter to Sadie first thing in the morning, and if it made it's way to you, then that means I'm dead._

_I think that's part of it, you know? Of the not-knowing. Never been a man to philosophize, and I ain't about to start now, but it's been on my mind. I don't know how this whole thing will turn out. I just know you made it out safe, and so will John, Abigail and lil Jack too. Might very well be the last thing I do._

_Oh, Charles. All I know is I miss you. Sounds like a silly thing to say, with you being gone only a week but well, you and I both know this is it so... Here I am, acting like a fool for you once more. And while there's many things I regret, being with you was never one of 'em._

_I would do it all again, you know? If that's what it takes, I wouldn't hesitate, not even a second. Being with you made life worth living, no matter how hard it got. I guess that's the thing about love, ain't it? I always thought it ain't meant for someone like me. You proved me wrong on that, as you tend to do. Made me a freer man than I ever was._

_Because I do, Charles. I love you. Said it once or twice but it ain't ever enough. You were the best damn thing that ever happened to me and letting you go was the hardest damn thing, too._

_And I'm sorry, for what it's worth. I'm sorry that everything turned out this messy. I'm sorry I can't be there now, with you._

_I'll spend the time that's left for me thinking about you, Charles. There ain't much else I can give you. There ain't much else of me left. I hope, wherever you are, that you're thinking about me too._

_And yet, while my story is nearing its end, it's only a chapter in yours. You deserve the world, Charles. You do._ _You told me not so long ago I owe you, and I think you didn't realize how much. I ain't got what it takes to ask another favor of you but..._

_Keep going, please. Do it for me, Charles._

_I'm running out of space and there's so much more I want to tell you. Just know that that peace we was talking about finding? I think I did. I found it in you._

_I'm yours, Charles. Always, remember?_

_Arthur_

*

The letter has its own pocket in every one of Charles's shirts. Folded into a small square, the pages are tucked into that spot over his heart, a familiar weight.

Charles knows every word by memory and yet, every time when the leaves start to fall, he sits by Taima's side and reads it, sometimes to himself, sometimes out loud. The paper is weak where it's been bent too many times, the sketches that fill the few blank spots a little smudged but it doesn't matter.

Arthur is with him, always, and that is all that counts.

**Author's Note:**

> Aaand now I'm sad haha... ha ;___;
> 
> This is kind of a half-way fill, I guess? I don't think Arthur would have time (or the proper support system of friends/family) to pull off a full P.S. I Love You, but I like to think he gave Sadie the letter and some other, smaller things and told her to give it to Charles, when the time is right.
> 
> It seems like I'm incapable of writing anything that's not extreme fluffy OR extremely angsty aaaaa
> 
> [tumblr](https://kawaiibooker.tumblr.com) / [twitter](https://twitter.com/kawaiibooker)


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